A Cuban was sentenced to 13 years and one month in prison in the United States for trafficking cocaine from the Dominican Republic, where he had been residing for years.
Lázaro Vitón Rodríguez, 55, participated from 2014 to May 2019 in an international conspiracy to transport more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine to the United States.
As reported on Thursday by the Department of Justice in a statement, the drug trafficking network was based in the Dominican Republic and transported cocaine from South America through the Caribbean, for which it used vessels such as sailboats and sport fishing boats.
During the journeys, he often stopped at Caribbean ports to provide legitimacy to each trip.
In November 2018, one of those vessels was intercepted by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Marine Interdiction Unit as it entered U.S. waters near Key Biscayne, Florida. Upon searching the boat, agents seized more than 327 kilograms of cocaine.
"Rodríguez was involved in the purchase, registration and maintenance of vessels used by the drug trafficking network to transport cocaine. He helped register vessels in the name of front buyers, built secret compartments on the vessels to hide the cocaine and coordinated with members of the crew via satellite phones while sailing to locations in the Caribbean to pick up cocaine," the text states.
The Cuban was arrested in January 2022 and in November 2023 he pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to distribute five kilos or more of cocaine for importation into the United States.
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